Taken from the rooftop on the corner of 10th and Pike. That’s Against Me! about to incite a riot down below. There’s video, too, but I’m not gonna take the time to YouTube it right now. Monday for sure.

The cops were actually very gracious in telling us to get off the roof. One officer told me that there have been no injuries or disturbances at all during CHBP.

We rage, but we’re well behaved.

Case in point. Though I got mooned by the shirtless guy right after I took this shot. So we’re well behaved, until we’re not.

On the bus ride on the way to the Block party a small group of people were talking about something. I’m not sure what. It’s not important. What is important is that whatever they were talking about resulted in one of the guys saying:

“In all the time I carried around that moist towelette, never did someone shit on me.”

I laughed. Apparently he needed a moist towelette and apparently he no longer carried one on him. Apparently he use to, and apparently, because he never got shit on, he stopped carrying it.

I mean, apparently.

I thought nothing of it. Then I met this guy.

His name is Peter, and that trophy he’s holding is what he won after taking first place in a doughnut eating contest at the Vera stage before Elphaba’s set. Angela Garbes would be proud.

Peter was a nice enough fella. I introduced myself, congratulated him, and asked to take his picture. He kindly obliged and shook my hand. He shook my hand after he used the very same hand to shove something like a half-dozen frosting-covered doughnuts in his mouth.

So now my hand’s all wet and sticky and man… I really need a moist towelette.

From Ari, sent at 2:51 pm: A bong and a burger are moshing to Sunday Night Blackout.

I didn’t make it in time to see the fight, but I did catch SNB’s killer cock-rock set along with the aftermath of the Fight of the Century.

Burger:

Bong:

The bong took a big hit and lost the battle. The Big Mac is the Burger King.

(Thanks to my friend Dan for supplying this post’s witty commentary).

This year’s hit fashion? “Vacation Dad.”

Ryan from the Whore Moans explains…

They were fantastic, by the way. It was the first time I had ever seen them live. I was so glad I finally did. Tons of sweat and energy, the crowd clapped and danced a long, and they played familiar material from their new record Watch Out for This Thing along with a few new jams.

They also declared their song “Dissappear” as the anthem for Summer 2K7 and I have to whole-heartedly second that motion. The tune is very Crimpshrine-sounding with starry guitars and heavy fluid bass. It is a great summer tune.

So far, this is the best song I’ve heard today that has a line about wanting to hit a girl not wanting to hit a girl because she’s too pretty.

Kaz “PWRFL Power” Nomura kicked off CHBP Day two in his singular, inimitable style. The guy’s so damn lovable, and funny, and such a badass guitar player, that it’s impossible not to fall for his shtick. Highlights were “Cat Song,” “Tomato Song,” “Banana Song,” and my favorite, “Let Me Teach You How to Hold Chopsticks.” This one went

Let me teach you how to hold chopsticks
You’re so pretty
And you’re holding them wrong

The highlight was the finale—a song Nomura said he penned specifically for Block Party, sung from the perspective of a homeless person. He instructed the crowd on a little singalong bit, and then dove in with “Let’s do something bad today, like steal a glass from the new Cha Cha.” For the chorus, he spelled out “F. U. N. K.” and the crowd pumped fists and yelled “FUNK!” several times. Yes, a crowd of Cap Hill kids chanting for funk in the middle of an intersection—this truly is a miraculous festival.

After his set a fan came up to Nomura with a pair of black enamel chopsticks. “Will you teach me how to hold them right?” he asked. Nomura took the chopsticks and showed him. Both walked away happy.

The Cribs are pop-punking on the mainstage right now, but im heading out to check out our man Kurt Reighely spinning records at Havana. Music!

So many people, so much fun… GET THERE! Go now!

I’ve scrapped two versions of this post already, since there’s more than enough being written about the great performances thus far here at the CHBP. My highlights include Matt and Kim (the happiest band on the planet), Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (more bands should throw Otter Pops into the audience), Silversun Pickups (it took a while for the vocals to get dialed in, at which point the set became great), and of course Girl Talk (those people were right to near-riot to get in, it was great, with lots of new material - Gillis is a contemporary pop music scholar). It’s early in the day but it’s looking like today’s going to be busier than yesterday, so here are some tips for those of you on your way down:

- The sun is out. Wear sunscreen. I’ve got melanin, so sunburn isn’t a risk I worry about much, but I know many of you aren’t as lucky in that regard.

- Bring earplugs. The sound is dialed in on every stage. Every band I’ve heard has sounded great (or rather, deficiencies couldn’t be blamed on the sound system). Even the Blood Brothers’ sound check was deafening.

- Bring a bag with your own “water.” I’m not advocating that you bring in your own booze, but I haven’t seen much in the way of bag searching. Do with that information what you will.

- Get your 21+ wristband early. The lines to get into Neumos grew longer as the day progressed, but for most of the day if you already had a wristband you could skip right past the line.

- Get to Neumos early. I don’t think tonight will be as crazy for getting into the late-night performances (Pretty Titty, the Spankrock DJs), but you still might want to head down to catch The Girls’ set to ensure your entry. They’re a great band so you should do that anyway.

- Be nice to security. I had a constant flow of texts going with a friend stuck in the Girl Talk line. Sounds like things got a bit heated, but as someone on the inside, the venue was really damn full. It’s too bad they didn’t let people in as people left, but that was only a trickle and when you’ve got crowdsurfing ON STAGE, it’s probably wiser to do what you can to keep things under control.

- Have fun. This is shaping up to be one of the best weekend’s of the year (CHBP AND Daft Punk, with an early kickoff from DFA/Beats in Space’s Tim Sweeney - hell yes!), so time to get out and rock out.

All photos by Dagmar Sieglinde Patterson

_{(all photos courtesy of Kelly O)}

The Saturday Knights kicked things off in style as usual. Jonathan’s got them pretty much covered here.

I think Ron Sims (was that Ron Sims?) just introduced these guys as “Natalie Portman’s Skinned Head.” I’ve been saying this for a minute now, but Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head are going to be great once they get another year of being a band under their collective white belt, and I still think that.

Matt & Kim were easily the highlight of my day (yeah, I didn’t get in to see Girl Talk either). I think I mentioned their incessant grinning in my preview of them, but it’s worth mentioning again. For at least one person I talked to after their set, it was Kim’s manic smile behind the drum kit that made the biggest impression. For me, it’s the moment in “Silver Tiles” where the drums drop out and Matt sings, “And all our hopes/and all our friends” over a couple sustained notes. It’s a climactic, finger-pointing, sing-along moment. Also, Matt & Kim superfan with the Team Gina hat, you are awesome.

For more Matt & Kim positivity, check out their review of the crowd.

A friend and I watched the Blood Brothers from a patch of shade back by the sound booth, marveling that we’d been watching this band for the last ten years. It’s pretty awesome that such an odd, chaotic band has lasted so long (even if there’s rumors that they won’t last much longer). It’s also pretty disorienting, because the Blood Brothers are basically a completely different band than the one I remember from my late teens and underage twenties. And while I’m familiar with their new material and even fond of some of it, it’s still weird. The band never play their older material—the pubescent ragers of This Adultery is Ripe and Rumours Laid Waste, the post punk psych operas of March on Electric Children—and for whatever reason, that stuff will always be what I think of first when I think of the Blood Brothers. But their crowd was nuts—kids thrashing and flailing around, crowd surfing (ugh)—and it’s great that the Blood Brothers continue to make music that resonates with literally a new generation of kids. They still play with roughly the same energy and fey/foxy charisma as always, even if they seem a little less prone to diving into audiences these days. And they sounded great yesterday—theirs was the first set to really impress me with the sound quality of the Block Party—the guitars pierced the open summer air rather than just floating away in it, the bass and drums were booming, the keyboards were clear, and the vocals were sharp and evenly mixed (minus one bad mic moment for Jordan Blillie).

I only caught a couple songs of Blue Scholars, because I had my own night to take care of, but I did catch their flip of Green Day’s “Brain Stew” for their first song. It was kind of an odd move—not because hip hop never samples a rock song, duh—but because Seattle hip hop (especially Blue Scholars) seems to have such momentum right now that it just seems unnecessary, even at what is in large part a rock festival, to do that kind of cross genre outreach. Regardless, Sabzi, played with the sample and brought in a thick beat underneath it, and Geologic launched into an authoritative performance. that kept a packed intersection hanging on his every syllable.

I slipped out of my other engagement around 11:30 to try to get into Girl Talk, only to find a mob of people lined—well, mobbed—up at the door to Neumo’s. After a couple minutes, it seemed clear that I was not getting in there, so I took off. I was a little bummed, because I’d been counting on Girl Talk to be the highlight of the whole Block Party, and I’m sure it was rad, but I’m not sure I could have possibly had any more fun than I did at Girl Talk’s last Seattle show. Maybe next time.

Don’t have too much more to contribute to BP Day One chat that hasn’t yet been brought up, other than Zwickel’s Fear & Loathing get-up, though I’m surprised the intro to the Blue Scholars’ set has gone unmentioned.

Like most of the sets, local councilperson Dow Constantine took the stage for introduction duties. This man came out with jugs of candy, however, and began throwing gum-sized treats at the crowd. Thankfully, he didn’t follow up this patronizing bullshit by jumping into the crowd, grabbing everyone’s cheeks and squealing, “Who’s a cute li’l voter? Yes you are! Yes you are.”

Call that an overreaction, but Scholars’ DJ Sabzi appeared to take offense on some level as well when he and Geologic were introduced as this councilman’s “constituents.” “We do not ally ourselves with any political party in particular, just to get that out of the way,” Sabzi began, before flicking on his tables and beats and getting the tremendously moving show started. Not sure if the underage, Roca Wear-covered, beer drinking twinkies to my left appreciated the revolutionary slant of “50,000 Deep” and the like, but still, I was impressed to see so many people wave their hands in the air—even when unprovoked. Shout-out to the fogeys on the nearby rooftop who tried, hard as they might, to raise that very roof.

The Crayolas are in preparation for their appearance as we speak. Fluffing and lifting free weights and listening to Falco.

Crayola handler, Stanley Cramdorf, has his Block Party Trivia Questions ready. Answer correctly and get candy and Crayola love:

1. What is the correct pronunciation of PWRFL POWER?
2. Where is PWRFL POWER from?
3. What Stranger columnist is in Cancer Rising?
4. What is Jonathan Zwickel’s DJ name?
5. Where is Girl Talk from?
6. Where is Against Me! from?
7. Where does Spencer from the Saturday Knights work?
8. What band is named after a vessel that floats in water?
9. What Seattle expatriate DJ moved to LA and started a label?
10. Which Bible book did the Intelligence name their album after?
11. Which Block Party band recently signed to Loveless Records?
12. Which Block Party band is a married two-piece?
13. What is your favorite breakfast cereal?
14. Do you like Ace of Bass?
15. What is the fastest land animal?

Last night’s Girl Talk show was possibly the best dance party I have ever been to. Neumos was the most packed I’ve seen it, way past normal show capacity, crammed with drunk people ready to dance. This of course meant the drink lines were ridiculously long, bringing into question a life-long paradox: the mystery beer.

As I stood in the back of the club enjoying the Trucks I finished my drink and woefully looked at the empty glass. It took me 15 minutes to get that drink and only three minutes to drink it. I didn’t want to wait in line for another, but I also wanted to have a good buzz on for the impending dance explosion. Behind me on a table sat three abandoned beers, untouched for the entirety of the Trucks set. They were hardly if at all drank, still had head that was clear of foreign particles, and very, very tempting. Keep in mind, I’m the sort of guy that will put something gross in my mouth on a dare, and when a stranger hands me a barely sipped drink in a bar and says, “I’m leaving, you want this?” I drink it unhesitatingly. But these beers - there was something not quite right about these beers. The fact that there were three…I just knew one of them was tainted. This was a trick! Someone on the balcony was watching, waiting to see if I would drink the laced cup. Behind one of those three doors was a tiger waiting to eat me. No, what was I thinking? There’s nothing wrong with those beers. Someone bought them and then decided to leave and abandoned them on the table, expecting some tasteless idiot like myself to drink them. But how could I be sure? I couldn’t. I stood in line for another twenty minutes and paid for another drink.

Girl Talk immediately had everyone in Neumos dancing their ass off. Within seconds people swarmed the stage and freaked out next to Gillis as he took favorite samples from Night Ripper and mixed them into new creations. “Since You Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk, and Mims “This is Why I’m Hot” (which I never thought I could enjoy) mixed into “Time After Time” were all crowd favorites. Around 1:20am the security guards inexplicably started kicking everyone off the stage, including a hilarious moment when they tried to kick off Gillis himself. The party kept going on the floor, with Gillis jumping over his laptop station into the crowd, only to return to the stage with no pants. The energy in the room was amazing, never letting down for the entirety of his set. Greg Gillis really knows how to get a party started. Definitely the highlight of day one.

nice photo by Micah Barrett

By the time you read this, you better already be on your way to the Block Party, or else your totally gonna be missing shit!

However, our final Block Party Bands of the Day are Cribs and the Pop Machine! You have to make the decison NOW about which one you are gonna be seeing!

The Pop Machine Number of Myspace Friends: 1,323

One time I saw this band practicing. I was wandering around in Ballard (don’t ask me why, I have no idea why I went there either), and of course, when in Ballard, you better get into Bop Street Records. That place is awesome. It’s like the record stores I used to go into in Boston—it’s dirty, they have a whole Nina Hagen section, the counter clerk might be secretly getting drunk. I love it. It’s the best thing about Ballard.

Anywhoo, I was wandering through Bop Street when I heard a band playing in the basement. The basement is a cavern full of duplicates of what they have upstairs that they use to restock and to sell wholesale, and down there, in all the huge stacks, I found the Pop Machine. I watched them sing some songs and they were a sweaty, poppy mess. That was about three quarters of a year ago, I think, and they sure have cleaned up their act. Now, they are a sweaty, poppy, ball of fun. Go listen to their songs on Myspace. It’s fun as hell.

The Cribs Number of Myspace friends: 47,14—Also, doesn’t the guy on the right look a little like Ben Lashes?

I’ve never seen the Cribs perform in a basement, or anywhere at all. I think I even looked over the fact that they were on the schedule for Block Party in the same way you look over a word that you don’t know when you are reading a book, and then later you don’t even remember reading the word at all.

I feel less than qualified judging the Cribs. They would be less than qualified to judge me as well. I know that they released a record of poppy rock music that some guy from Franz Ferdinand produced (does that mean anything these days? Did they pay him as much as he got to do that cookbook?). I also know that they have a nice Myspace, with many many comments. I feel like those people are more qualified than me, a.k.a, they’ve heard of the Cribs, so let’s look at a selection:

“frm now on ur so much better than kasabian, and im not saying that coz im pissed off, anyway, i agree, music is rubbish right now!my bro said that u talking bout u self, he thinks u are crap and shud fuckoff this earth, he a right knobhead.!!!womans needs is best live song,i filmed it…”

I agree! Right Knobhead! Brilliant.

“great show at the trobadour it was amazing yea mon cum bak soon please ,,,n thnx fo the encore nn yea it was pretty hot in dat venue”

Yea Mon! Go see the Cribs!

(The Cribs play today at 4:15 pm on the Main Stage. The Pop Machine plays at 3 pm on the Vera Stage. I don’t know why these got set up as versus, you could totally catch both if you want to. And if you hurry!)

Half-satanic.

Word on Pike street is that the Blood Brothers might not be a band much longer, because Johnny Whitney wants to start an alt-country band. Is that true? If it is, it would be a real shame, because they sounded fucking fantastic tonight.

Talking in the VIP tent after their early set…

Kim: “They were so amazing.”

Matt: “Seattle is so good to us. We went through so much shit. We lost our plane tickets home, we realized we didn’t have any speakers or amps, we broke the leg on one of the drums. But the thing is we started playing and everyone was so fucking positive. Although I got stoned and had some Pabst.”

Kim: “The crowd totally makes the show. When the beach ball came out I was psyched.”

They lost their plane tickets home? Huh? They explained: They were at another festival and they got vouchers to fly home on, but on the flight to Seattle they somehow lost those vouchers. They’re hoping that the vouchers are found and used by some people who really need them—a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, a family with a sick relative… But as of this moment, they still don’t know how they’re getting home.

They had some barbecue in the VIP tent and then, as the Blood Brothers started playing, went over to the VIP fence to watch.

(Special thanks to the sun for the photo)

The Saturday Knights kicked off Capitol Hill Block Party (from here on out abbreviated to CHBP) ) (or BP if we’re especially lazy) exactly three hours ago. Just like at Sasquatch, the fellas took to their lead spot gracefully. There’s a reason why they go first: They are party starters. You can’t fight the feeling.

Granted, it was their usual set—we’re dying for new songs ova hea, doods. BUT beach balls and city streets made the right setting for their quasi-Beasties rap-rock shenanigans. AND for the final two songs of the set, Neumo’s honcho Jason Lajuenesse got behind a meager drum kit and pounded out some tight, punchy backbeats, going beat for beat with Spencer’s turntable-driven backdrop. Tilson must be sweating his ass off in a camel-colored wool suit and flaming orange wool hat, but hey, the duds match the shoes perfectly. “Meter’s running, girlfriend’s waiting, bank ain’t open yet”—we’ve all been there before, but it’s never felt funkier.

At the finale, Spencer spazzed out; he picked up a mic stand and smashed it through Lajuenesse’s bass drum. He flailed out and kicked over the high hat. Lajuenesse kept playing his snare and cockeyed ride cymbal, as long as he could til Spencer took down the rest of the kit with kicks and swings from the mic stand. Violence! It was an unexpected ending to an otherwise welcome but by-the-numbers set.

If TSK’s blitzkrieg finale set the tone for the rest of this fest, we’re all in great shape. It’s only three hours into it but I’m seriously feeling the Block Party vibe.

(For real: Right now the Blood Brother’s rape-porn noise rock is bleeding through the Stranger’s office windows. Fuckin’ unsettling. JZ out.)

Talbot Tagora missed their set on the Vera Stage, because their ride never showed up. IT seems unlikely that they’ll be able to reschedule a set, but we’ll see. Either way, maybe they should invest in one of these:

It’s not quite 5, and I assume a lot of you suckers still have to wait until The Man let’s you off work before you can start rocking the CHBP. People are slowly filing in… so should you be one of those cube rats still stuck in the office, here’s a little taste of what you’re missing:

Puppies! The Saturday Knights playing beach ball with the crowd! And a dude wearing an overcoat made out of duct tape!

Get here! We’ve only just begun…

But allow some time because, as you probably guessed, there are some lines too…

If you missed last night’s first edition of Circus, which was a great night of amazing classic disco, italo, rare edits, etc., well it’s safe to say you definitely missed out. However, you’ll have another opportunity next month when Terry, Kurt, and I host the second edition of Circus at Pony. Info on that coming soon.

Also if you couldn’t make it to Circus, you will have an opportunity next Friday, August 3rd, to check out another new disco night, Club Cabana at The Solo Bar in Queen Anne (It will be worth getting off “The Hill” for a night)which will basically be a tropical version of Circus! Classic disco, italo, salsoul classics, re-edits, everything you basically find on the American Athlete blog.

Here is one of the many tracks, the classic Dimitri from Paris re-edit of The O’ Jays’ 1975 disco gem “I Love Music”, that I played last night to give you a feel of what you missed.

The O’ Jays - I Love Music (Dimitri from Paris Touch Up Re-edit)

Hope to see you out next week!

You’ll be at the Block Party to get drunk and watch some rock and roll, but on top of all that, did you you’ll also be able to stalk your favorite Stranger staffer and/or request that they play “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce?

That’s right! All weekend, that music you hear blasting from the mainstage speakers while the crew sets up for the next band will be be coming straight from the record/CD/mp3 collection of some of The Stranger’s very own.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday:
3 to 4 pm - DJ FITS (Eric Grandy)
4:45 to 5:15 pm - DJ Dusk (Charles Mudede)
6:15 to 6:45 pm - Nips (Mike Nipper)

Saturday:
1 to 2pm - Zwikipedia (Jonathan Zwickel)
2:30 to 3pm - Jiggle Low (Dan Paulus)
3:45 to 4:15 - Klam-bone (Audrey Klammer)
5 to 5:30 - DJ FITS (Eric Grandy)

It’s the Capitol Hill Block Party episode!

Click here to hear bands playing the Block Party including Speaker Speaker, PWRFL POWER, Boat, and Sunday Night Blackout.

Killer, brah.

Click to listen.

I didn’t peruse last week’s Up & Coming pitch list very carefully, or else I would’ve noticed that Ludicra, a superb SF black metal band, are playing tomorrow night. Who cares if it’s Block Party that night. I mean, are there any black metal bands playing Block Party? No, so there is really no competition here. Go to the Funhouse Saturday night and catch Ludicra (9:30 pm, $10, with Wolves in the Throne Room, Wormwood, and The Better to See You With). It will indeed be worth it. We’re talking two female vocalists, intricate guitar work, superfast beats. This band is fucking excellent! I’ve seen them several times in the Bay Area, and they have never disappointed live. Check out their MySpace page for MP3s (I recommend “In the Greenest Maze”).

Here is a spider called the ludicra jumping spider:

P.S. While I was checking out Life Is Abuse’s website (where I learned about this show), I saw that they recently updated their news section, which for the past year or two has had some little blurb about how the final Dystopia LP, recorded two years ago, still isn’t done. Unfortunately, it still says basically the same thing: “The final Dystopia LP/CD is still not out. Mastering is done, artwork is not. Total Suck.” Total suck, indeed.

First of all, forget Daft Punk’s ecstatic anthems. Forget “One More Time.” Forget “Around the World.” Hell, forget even the occasional great moment on “Human After All.” Daft Punk’s Electroma—the “odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human”—is a huge downer, like Brokeback Mountain for robots.

The film doesn’t feature any Daft Punk songs, but rather a score of analog synth drones and oscillations punctuated by the classic rock, r&b, and soft pop of Todd Rundgren, Sebastian Tellier, Brian Eno, and Curtis Mayfield. The cinematography is patient and pretty—lots of slow pans of the American Southwest, shots of the two protagonist robots walking, and the stunning central scene of the robots being “transformed” in a digitally whited-out laboratory populated by matching white figures that merge and emerge with the background in what might be the film’s most striking visual effect—but the pacing is so slow. In just over an hour, roughly three things happen.

The movie begins with some still shots of canyon walls, the rock formations looking almost like human faces. Suddenly, there’s a vintage, black Ferrari parked in the middle of the desert—it’s license plates say “HUMAN” (it’s unclear whether or not this rare cab has dice on the mirror). Two familiar robots—one with a silver helmet, one with a gold helmet, both wearing leather jackets embroidered with “Daft Punk” on the backs—walk up, get into the car, and drive off. They drive for a while. They listen to the radio. They pass a slow-moving tractor being driven by a familiar looking robot. They pull into a small town, and we see that everyone—children, businessmen, a wedding party—sports the same gold or silver helmets. They pull up to a dated, post-war building. Inside is the blinding white, hi-tech lab.

The lab operators pour some brown goo—something in between a latex paint and a chocolate frosting, over the robots’ helmets. They shape it and add molded facial features and wigs to make the robots human. Transformed, the robots strut through town with their new, comical caricatures of human faces. The townsfolk—townsbots?—stare with awed hostility, until their faces start to melt in the hot sun. Our heroes are chased out of town by a mob. They duck into a bathroom and peel off their failed human faces, the gold helmeted bot more readily than his seemingly weaker counterpart. They follow some train tracks and wind up alone in the desert. They walk and walk and walk. Finally, they give up, and the ending, though hinted at by intercut shots throughout the film, still comes as a sad shock.

Making the experience only more depressing was the fact that I still don’t know if I’m going to get into Daft Punk’s show on Sunday. It’s super sold out, and I held off on buying tickets, thinking I’d get in to review the show for Line Out. As of today, there’s still no word on whether or not that’s gonna happen. Bummer. Nevermind. It’s so on!

Ryan Adams plays the Moore tonight; last night he was at Portland’s Aladdin Theater. Corey DuBrowa—who in this week’s paper took a deep look into the alt-country roustabout’s meandering career track and wondered which side of Adams would show up to play—was there.

He reports:

So here’s your answer, having seen last night’s show: 50% “Rescue Me Ryan,” 50% “Urban Deadhead.”

The between song banter was funny as hell (and the bass player had to get stitches in his head b/c of an “accident,” so there was lots of hilarity to be had there) but the Grateful Dead pastiche bored the hell out of me by the second hour.

The same ol’ Ryan: talent to burn but using it in service of Beavis/Butthead material.

Now you know.

Oh man. Dan Deacon is a WEIRDO!

Is he in a state of arrested development or something? I wish I had been in the studio for this performance on some morning news station in Georgia. They seem totally freaked out:

What a freak! But I lurves him, and I lurves the song “Snake Mistakes” so much I picked it for this week’s Best Song Ever.

You can listen to it here.

I’m pretty sure this song is about three things: a snake making mistake, someone getting mad at bees, and someone having a really cool dad. Any of the following could be possible: Dan Deacon feels like a snake, Dan Deacon gets really pissed at bees that hover, Dan Deacon has a really cool dad. But somehow I really don’t think Dan Deacon is writing about himself. I think he’s writing from some alternate universe where he could inhabit the bodies of multiple beings at once and direct them in a massive piece of theater that could solve global warming.

SRSLY!

Oh, and it’s funky as hell.

Block Party set-up has begun. Pike is shut down from Broadway to 12th. 10th and 11th are shut down from Pine to Union.

Pike and Broadway

Beer garden

Vera Stage and sound tent

Mainstage

BP Organizer Dave Meinert was wandering the grounds and, seeing as how the biggest block party in the city is set to go down in about four hours, he seemed really calm. He’s also stoked about the new mainstage which, according to him, is bigger this year—higher and wider. He also promises that it won’t sway and constantly threaten to collapse (or at least look like it) like the stage did during last year’s Murder City Devils’ performance.

And finally, Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings (Audium Entertainment, 2001).

Before the Bakersfield sound, before Carnegie Hall, before Hee Haw, Owens was trying to find his voice, and in the mid-to-late ’50s he produced some excellent music, collected here in the 21-track anthology Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings. The songs here are extremely stripped down compared to his recordings just a few years later; he hasn’t got that amped-up shuffle going on yet, so these songs are all in the vein of traditional country like Webb Pierce and Hank Williams, with a couple rockabilly numbers thrown in. And there’s no Don Rich. That’s not to say that the songs on this album are bad, they’re just different from what a fan of Owens might be used to. I personally cherish this album. I love it.

This was the only Owens album I had for years, so getting into his more freight-train-style ’60s stuff was difficult for me at first. Unfortunately, I just have a copy of the CD, so I don’t have the liner notes, nor can I find much information about the songs on the album. From Owens’s website I’ve learned that in 1956 he recorded for Pep “It Don’t Show on Me,” “Down on the Corner of Love,” “The House Down the Block,” and “Right After the Dance” in L.A., and “Sweethearts in Heaven,” “There Goes My Love,” “Hot Dog,” and “Rhythm and Booze” in Bakersfield. “Country Girl (Leavin’ Dirty Tracks)” was recorded for Chesterfield in 1957. But who’s playing with Owens on these songs? When and where were the other tracks recorded? I have no idea.

The best on the CD: “It Don’t Show on Me” tells of Owens hiding his hurt from his gal; “The House Down the Block” is his family home that he longs for but is too disgraced to enter; “Country Girl (Leavin’ Dirty Tracks)” has a pleasantly painful steel-guitar lick and great lyrics (“You should’ve know that country feet/were never meant for city streets”); “Honeysuckle” is a fantastic upbeat instrumental; “Blue Love” ends with the line “My life was only meant for misery” (yes!); in “Right After the Dance” Owens says he’s going to “make love to you right after the dance” (I think “make love” had a different meaning back then); “Sweethearts in Heaven” is good, but the premise is kind of creepy, as the title suggests; “Down on the Corner of Love” has a sweet, soaring chorus; “There Goes My Love”; “Please Don’t Take Her from Me”; “Why Don’t My Mommy Stay with My Daddy and Me?” These are all first-rate honky-tonk tunes, and all the songs on this CD are good, some better than others. The rockabilly stuff (“Hot Dog” and “Rhythm and Booze,” originally recorded under the name Corky Jones) isn’t as good as the honk tonk.

There’s lots of fiddle and some piano, and an alternate take of “Blue Love” features trumpet, à la Bob Wills, and studio chatter of Owens telling his “fellas” how the song’s gonna go. (“I want piano, but I don’t want too much piano. Run a little piano, and a little trumpet, and a little bit of everything, but don’t run too much of one thing. And make it short.”)

These songs show that Owens is already an excellent songwriter—musically and lyrically—writing and performing heartfelt, hurtin’ tunes.

And now I see, hot off the presses from cmt.com, that Owens pupil and collaborator Dwight Yoakam is going to release an Owens tribute album, Dwight Sings Buck, on October 23, with the magnificent “Close Up the Honky Tonks” as the first single. My sister’s going to be pumped.

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail, The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos, and Carnegie Hall Concert.

Two mixes for you today, to help get you through the last hours before the Block Party.

1) Red Pony (Rebecca West) @ Broken Disco

I spent this week’s column gushing about Rebecca West and her Red Pony set at the last Broken Disco. Now the set can finally be shared with those who might not have been in attendance that night. Rebecca originally recorded the set in real-time but accidentally overwrote the file, so she recreated it in her studio. Enjoy.

2) DJ Pretty Titty for Discobelle.net

Seattle’s getting its name out there on the hipster dance circuit, and now DJ Pretty Titty’s made the digital big time, contributing to a mix for discobelle.net (good site with a constant flow of fresh tunes). He’s compiled the second half of a mix with Devlin Darko (of Spankrock). Both are playing the Block Party Saturday night. Enjoy.

OK, so remember yesterday, when I was talking about that band the Moools? And how I love them? And how I wish they would play with Phil Elvrum?

Well, get ready to crap your pants!

I received this email today from Tristan, the booking assistant at the Vera Project:

Ari,
Just letting you know that the Moools are playing at The Vera Project on October 2, with Mt. Eerie, PWRFL Power, and The Oregon Donor. Also, this show is All-Ages. So yeah.

He sounds a little pissed off that I didn’t check…which he should be. Bad Ari!

I also received this comment on the post itself, from the Moools themselves.

Thanks for writing about us. We’re so excited to play in Seattle again with our old friend John Atkins’ The Can’t See. We also have another show at The Vera Project Oct 2 with Mt. Eerie. We’ll down the west coast with Mt. Eerie. Please check our myspace http://www.myspace.com/moools.

Genial!

All my problems are solved! Although, I haven’t been able to get the music on the Myspace to play, but that’s probably Myspace’s problem (they’ve been acting wonky for a good while…if you get the music to play, leave a comment and I will go back and try again).

I was four years old in 1978. I don’t know where I heard this song or how it stayed with me til now, but it did. Without the internet, who knows how long it would’ve taken me to find Exile again? Go internet!

Because really—this is a rollerskatingly good song. The keyboard drone is cool in a Styx-ish sci-fi way, but I really dig the scuzzy guitar riff/bass line counterpoint—it’s sort of epic. The fact that this is certainly one of the blissfully cheesiest vocals of all time exponentially reduces the epicness.

And that chorus—the song turns all electro space-funk badditude for a split-second. Rad!

Peep the video—it’s the best of the series so far. The middle guy looks like he belongs in a different band—one that strums lutes in a countryside and sings about ladies fair. And the keyboardist’s mega-mullet is a thing of stunning ridiculosity.

Wiki says Exile is a country band.

Blue Crayola had an alternate fantasy sequence to Berlin. And there were Hawaiian tourists that wanted pictures. Falco’s “Der Kommissar” never sounded better.

Unfortunately, Berlin and Falco won’t make this year’s Capitol Hill Block Party, but the Crayolas will be there, getting fuzzy and distributing candy:

A palpable whoosh hit the room as Femi Kuti and the Postive Force took the stage, the collective gale expelled by five horn players, two percussionists, three costumed dancers, a rhythm section, a guitarist, and a keyboardist. And then Femi stoically marched to center stage and grabbed the mic. Behind him, the massive band erupted thunder, and a two-hour session of Motherland-made Afrobeat descended on the Showbox.

The band was insanely tight. And loud. And funky as hell. Five horns—baritone and tenor sax, trumpets, and trombone—locked in instantly, punching out syncopated blasts or wailing long melodic lines. As the rhythm section—a conga/bongo player and kit drummer—smashed out driving beats, the horns waited til the most precipitous moment… waited as the guitarist snaked his way through chicki-chicki syncopation… while the bassist built a steady pulse… while Femi chanted and crooned huskily… and then WRAAAAAAAAAAH would rush in all at once, sending the audience into a frenzy every single time.

With his second song Femi showed exactly how distinct he is from dear old dad. Where Femi clunked and blustered his way through the clunky, blustery sloganeering of “Stop AIDS,” Fela would’ve dismantled the entire African socio-medical industry with a song about a pair of pants. Femi is far less metaphoric than his father, and the song mired the set early on, when it should’ve been ascending.

But he recovered quickly. During a sax solo on the next song, Femi held his note for a good three minutes or so, circular breathing while the rest of the horns bopped and roared behind him. It was an extended moment of trance-like blues.

Later on, Femi’s didacticism finally worked in his favor, as he chanted the chorus of his international hit “Beng Beng Beng”—“Don’t come too fast.” It was an appropriately raw lyric for a style of music that’s undeniably sexual, sensual. The almost-sold-out crowd, diverse in age, color, and dress code—ate it up.

Through it all, Femi conducted the band like a classical conductor turned shirtless heartthrob, imperious in his control and dignified in his between-song banter. One thing the man certainly inherited from his father: he knows how to run a stage.

Femi’s breed of Afrobeat is cleaner, more globalized than Fela’s. His equipment is better, lacking the cranky, crackling, lo-fi scuzz that makes so much of Fela’s music so dark and harrowing. No doubt Femi has a broader vocal range; he’s probably a better sax player too. He lacks the intellectual venom of Fela, but perhaps that stems from a displomacy, an ability to communicate with a larger audience, that his father lacked, that his father could only pave the way for. There’s little chance of son being the same innovator as father, but he has the opportunity to bring about a greater influence.

Photos by Morgan Keuler

People have been e-mailing us about Block Party tickets, hearing that they’re sold out. Well they’re not. Dave Meinert just sent this message giving everyone the full scoop:

Tickets are selling fast for the Block Party - more tickets have sold in advance for this year than any year in Block Party history - however, it’s not sold out….yet!

Tickets for both Friday and Saturday are still available online at Ticketswest and Ticketswest outlets, and at the Neumo’s box office. Advance tickets for Friday will stop being sold tonight, but there will be tickets available at the festival. Tickets for Saturday will stay on sale until Saturday morning, and then will also be available at the festival. OK? IT”S NOT SOLD OUT. No matter what anyone tells you, there will be tickets at the festival for sale for both days, promise.

We suggest people arrive early to get your tickets at the festival to avoid lines. There are two places to get tickets at the festival - the main entrance is at Broadway and Pike - this is where you go if you ordered your tickets online and are getting them at ‘will call’, and you can also enter here if you have tickets, and you can also buy tickets here. However, there is also a gate at 12th Ave and Pike where you can purchase tickets and get in if you already have a ticket. The gate at 12th and Pike usually has shorter lines so is the quicker way to get in if you care about those kind of things.

A map of the Block Party showing the entrances is available here - http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/special/blockparty?page=map

There will be plenty of beer flowing in the beer gardens, but if you want the hard stuff, be sure to stop by the bars - Cha Cha, Moe Bar, Sugar, Havana, the Comet, and Wild Rose are all inside the festival and all great places to get out of the sun and get your drink on. You can see the mainstage from inside of Sugar and the Comet. Rock on!

With my recent trip to New York, I found a used record store in which I was able to stock up on all those classic Salsoul disco 12-inches and Lp’s I’m always longing for. One of my favorite records that I found was Bunny Sigler’s second LP titled, I’ve Aways Wanted To Sing… released back in 1979. This Salsoul-distributed Gold Mine records release was mixed by legendary engineer Bob Blank, while most of the music was recorded by members of Paradise Garage favorites Instant Funk, a disco/funk band that Sigler played in. My two favorite cuts from the LP are “By The way You Dance”, which Sigler is most known for, and “Simple Things You Do”. Both are classic disco songs that where staples in the NYC clubs of the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. If you love that early disco sound from NYC and Philadelphia, I highly recommend I’ve Aways Wanted To Sing….

Bunny Sigler - By The Way You Dance
Bunny Sigler - Simple Things You Do

————————-

Also remember, tonight is the first night of Pony’s Circus!. Classic Disco and Italo from the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, all night long!

Circus!
at Pony (Formerly Cha Cha Lounge)
1013 E Pike St, Seattle, Washington 98122
9PM $3

See you there!

I love getting my calendars from clubs every week with all the updated show listings. You get to see all the new stuff that’s confirmed. Right now is a great time to look at them, too, because all the September tours are starting to get booked. Here’s a choice nugget from today’s mail-pile:

1: The Moools @ Chop Suey on September 30th with the Can’t See and a SECRET AWESOME GUEST (it will be announced later in the summer)

Ok. The Moools are opening this show because you’ve never heard of them. It’s ok, they’re from Japan. They don’t have a Myspace that I can find, and they don’t have an American record label (but K did distribute the above EP of theirs). So how do I even know about them, other than the fact that I am super smart?

So one time, back in the ye-olde dayes of aught-three, I had just moved to Seattle and I had no fucking idea what was going on. But somewhere in my travels I managed to pick up a flyer for a show at the old Luscious Studios loft space. If I am correct, at the time, this was the home to the Stranger’s own Sam Mickens, along with a lot of other perfect no-goodniks. It was a three band lineup—the Microphones, the Moools, and a woman named Nikaido Muzumi. This was the Microphones’ first show back from his Japanese tour, and these are the bands he toured with there. Phil Elvrum was just beginning a transition into Mt. Eerie at that point, and he recorded a live album on tour in Japan (it’s GREAT).

Blah Blah Blah. The point is, that night, the Moools, Nikaido, and Phil all played together for Phil’s set. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard (and, going through my brain-memory, it’s definitely still at the top). Nikaido sounds like Bjork, but gentler and a little more standard, the Moools are just a great experimental psych band, and Elvrum was at the top of his game (a rarely seen artifact), playing a steel drum and singing at the top of his lungs. He wasn’t even that nervous, which he usually is. It was one of the best shows there ever was, and it proved to me that the Microphones/Mt. Eerie are worth your time if they create one-tenth of that available magic.

So, if the Moools are from Japan and they rarely come to America and no one here knows about them except for Phil Elvrum and he only lives in Anacortes, maybe I am thinking there might possibly be a reunion of this magic? I’m not saying he’s the secret guest on the show (because he’s not. I’ll tell you that one when the time comes), but I am hoping that he might just take the Greyhound down and maybe bring his steel drum. It would definitely make my entire fall just to re-live that one hour we all spent together four years ago.

Talbot Tagora

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Talbot Tagora:

The Talbot Tagora was an executive car developed by Chrysler Europe and produced by Peugeot Société Anonyme (PSA). The Tagora was marketed under the Talbot marque after PSA took over Chrysler’s European operations in 1979. PSA presented the first production vehicle in 1980 and launched it commercially in 1981. The Tagora fell far short of sales expectations, and PSA cancelled the model only two years later. Fewer than 20,000 Tagoras were ever built, all of them at the former Simca factory in the Poissy commune near Paris, France.

Here’s what the Stranger’s Capitol Hill Block Party guide says about Talbot Tagora:

Seattle upstarts Talbot Tagora play intricate postpunk full of dexterous guitars, flailing drum fills, and distant vocals. Their songs churn and twist unpredictably from chanted refrains to discordant riffs, but they reveal catchy hooks throughout, often in the most unusual moments. While the guitars and drums are playfully aggressive, the vocals are almost timid, delivered as mumbles or through walls of reverb, and the contrast makes for some spectacular tension.

Talbot Tagora play the Vera Stage on Friday, July 27th at 4:00pm.

Hi folks! I’m Larry.

I write the hiphop column ‘round here. I’m also in a local hiphop crew called Cancer Rising.

I don’t write about my own crew in my column cuz I’m not a fucking tool. I hope. I’m realizing now however that this is a bit of a hindrance- cuz goddamn it, who else at this place is going to do it? Zwickel definitely looks out, but I wouldn’t trust the rest of these fools to guess Erick Sermon’s last name- that goes double for you, Charles. So just for this brief, shining moment, I gives a fuck about propriety. I’m plugging us.

So yeah, we rap. Put out a CD that was on KEXP’s best-of-‘05 list(#45), played some good shows, got a new EP coming out next month (god willing). Our old CD had a song called “Rawkstar” that is in every way superior to the Shop Boyz’ “Party Like A Rockstar”. (Schmader, something tells me you’ll back me on this.) Listen to it here if you want.

We’re playing the Neumos Stage tomorrow night @ 10:15pm- right between Viva Voce and The Trucks. Come thru, say wassup.

Tonight is the debut of a new dance night at Pony, everyone’s favorite gay hole (in the wall). The night is called Circus, and it features not one but three Line Out bloggers on the decks—DJs El Toro (aka Kurt B Reighley), Heavy Mental Army (aka Terry Miller), and TJ Gorton (aka, well, TJ Gorton).

Circus will be a night of lesser known disco gems—you will not hear “It’s Raining Men” or “Disco Inferno”—you will hear plenty of true school disco, Italo oddities, and sneaky re-edits. Terry also mentioned something about hot pants, moustaches, and Sandra Bernhardt, but I have no idea what he was on about. To get a taste for what you might hear tonight, check out Terry’s Musical Life and these mp3s from American Athlete:

Mascara - “Baja (Instrumental Dub Remix)”

The Popular People’s Front - “I Love Only You”

Today in Buck Owens it’s 1966’s Carnegie Hall Concert (Capitol).

I bought this accidentally; it was inside the Together Again LP sleeve I bought at Bop Street, and while I looked at the condition of the record before buying it, I didn’t look at the labels on the disc, so I was rather surprised when I got home and put the record on. When I brought it back, Bop Street was kind enough to let me grab an actual copy of Together Again and keep this sleeveless Carnegie Hall Concert, too.

I like Carnegie Hall Concert, but it’s a little disappointing, mainly because Owens and the Buckaroos group 13 great songs into three short medleys. Fuck medleys! While they do play seven songs in their complete forms (although Doyle Holly’s version of “Streets of Laredo” is abbreviated, and “Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line” is one of my least favorite Owens songs), the fact that so many more could’ve been played all the way through hurts. And I know the concert is edited on my LP version; there’s no way they played that short of a show at Carnegie Hall.

So, I wondered if it had been rereleased in its entirety, and sure enough, in 2000 Sundazed Music put out a complete, unedited version. Mostly what’s been added back, however, is banter—an introduction by DJ Lee Arnold of WJRZ in Newark and segments called “Fun ’n’ Games with Don & Doyle” and “Buck Talks to the Audience”—and the song “Twist and Shout.” The banter on this album is supremely goofy, but I love the between-song talking on live albums, so more of it is sort of a blessing and a curse (though I like the sound of “Fun ’n’ Games with Don & Doyle”). I guess what I really want out of this album is for most of the songs in those medleys to be in their full-length form, and that’s just not going to happen for me.

That said, it’s a fun album, and I do enjoy it. Buck and the Buckaroos play well, they play all their hits, and they’re having a really great time. The banter is silly and awkward, but in a mostly endearing way, although some of Owens’s corniest jokes make me wince. I can see why Hee Haw wanted him as host.

At one point, while talking about how he and the Buckaroos had been to New York, but hadn’t actually played there, he slips up and says, “We never got to pick and sing for you; we’re gonna change that. We’re gonna do it to you tonight—er—for you tonight.” And the audience laughed. Was that on purpose, or a slip of the tongue? Who knows, but I like it either way.

Here’s “Act Naturally,” the concert opener:

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail, The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos . Up next, the final installment: Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings.

Perhaps.

There’s a lot of great content in this week’s Capitol Hill Block Party pull-out (including blurbs on every band/artist/DJ playing, and interviews with the Blue Scholars and Against Me! and Girl Talk and the Saturday Knights), but the thing that has me ROFLMAO!!one!#% is the piece in which Kaz Nomura, the man behind PWRFL POWER, interviews himself.

KAZ: I feel very fortunate and honored to do an interview with you, PWRFL POWER. There is a rumor that you are already the last genius of the century. It’s not even 2010 yet!

PWRFL POWER: [Laughs] Stop flattering, Kazu.

I heard you have a huge crush on Tiny Vipers.

Who told you that!? Yes… I do. I had a dream about her a few days ago. We were in a bathroom and she said, “Kazu, don’t watch me pee.” So I looked at the wall and there was a mirror hung. I tried to see her in the mirror…

And then…

I woke up. I saw a girl sleeping right next to me. It was in NYC. I met the girl at some bar and she was a huge fan of Spoon. So I told her that I am playing with them in Seattle. That was quick. And that’s the night I started liking Spoon. They are awesome.

Read the whole hilarious thing by clicking here. PWRFL POWER plays the main stage Saturday afternoon at 2 pm.

The Capitol Hill Block Party, that is. And according to weather.com, we can expect nothing but sun, mostly blue sky, and perfect temperatures.

Hooray!

Local art-core squealers Teeth & Hair are breaking up. They’re playing their final two shows tonight at Club Pop at Chop Suey with Tim Sweeney (DFA, Beats in Space) and tomorrow on some mysterious “ship.” Catch them while you can, and keep your eyes peeled—individual teeth and hairs are bound to turn up in some new bands.

Introducing the Crayola Drinking Club. Fuzzy, colorful, and ready for love.

Saturday, at this year’s Capitol Hill Block Party, the Crayolas will be roaming and looking to give out candy, and big hugs. Beware. Their handler, Stanley Cramdorf, will be asking trivia questions. Answer correctly and get candy and hug. Answer wrong, and you must wear the infamous Yellow suit.

So study up on your Block Party Trivia: Which member of the Saturday Knights studied ballet? Which main stage band is named after an eating utensil? What is Dan Savage’s favorite kind of ice cream?

Here are the Crayolas in training to get ready for their big day: